SARAH VINE

AS a saga of government and civil service incompetence, of ineptitude bordering on cruelty, of ingratitude, ignorance and failure, the Home Office’s disastrous misjudgment in relation to the children of Windrush arrivals from the Commonwealth countries takes some beating.

That said, it’s not the first time we’ve been here: a decade ago, gurkha veterans — natives of nepal who have served alongside british soldiers for almost 200 years, with more than 50,000 dying in service and 13 receiving the Victoria Cross — were forced to take the Labour government of the day to the High Court in order to win the automatic right to settle here. and now, we’ve let it happen again. This latest outrage is yet another example not only of how poorly britain sometimes treats those to whom it owes a great debt, but also of how twisted our bureaucratic morals are.

because, as both cases prove, it is always those who play by the rules and do the right thing who get punished — while those who act on the sly seem only to get rewarded for it.

Thus, on the one hand, you have women like Sarah O’Connor, who was interviewed in yesterday’s Mail, a hard- working 57- year- old from dagenham, who followed her mother to britain aged six in 1966 — and who now finds herself branded an illegal immigrant, despite having been a british taxpayer for the past 30 years. On

THe other hand, you have individuals who flush their passports down the toilet and lie about their age in order to claim asylum, or take advantage of our generous welfare system to line their own pockets, or accept everything this country has to offer by way of education and healthcare before espousing extremist views and bringing death and destruction to our streets.

The latter shamelessly exploit every legal and moral loophole in the book, while the former find themselves homeless, stateless and helpless.

Of course, you could argue that people like Sarah should have taken it upon themselves to get their official status sorted out a long time ago.

but, then again, when you’ve made your life somewhere in the belief that this is your home because it is where your parents were invited to settle, why would you have any doubts about your rights to citizenship? after all, nationality is so much more than a piece of paper with a number on it. it’s about contributing, belonging, being a useful member of society. Many of these people have done more than their fair share of that.

So, yes, this is a story of government — and, in some cases, personal — incompetence. but it’s also a story of how we now live in a world that treats people as pieces of paper, rather than individuals. Of the exasperating ‘Computer Says no’ existence we all lead, where unless who and what we are ticks the right boxes, we risk being robbed of our very identity.

but that is what happens when you replace people with automation. you strip out all the common sense and flexibility of human thought and end up in situations where a woman who has made 30 years’ worth of tax and national insurance contributions is deemed a non-person simply for lacking the right bit of paper.

in any sane world (where humans, not computers, still ran things), someone sensible would have realised the absurdity of this and rectified the error. but, nowadays, this is simply not possible. The hoops are the hoops and, if you cannot jump through them, you do not qualify.

The result: those who know how to play the system win, and those who can’t are left to suffer.